ENG 345: Week 6

In Kumar chapter 5, he talks about facilitating negotiated interaction. He talks about the three different types of interactional activities, which are textual, interpersonal, and ideational. Kumar talks about the input hypothesis where Krashen believes that listening and reading are of primary importance and the ability to speak or write will come automatically. Listening and reading are really important parts of learning a second language, but I do think that speaking and writing need to be addressed in the classroom. In order to become fluent and native-like in a second language then all components of a language need to be practiced and developed. Kumar continues and talks about input modifications and some studies done by Long “that demonstrated that learners who were exposed to linguistically unmodified input with opportunities to negotiate meaning understood it better than learners who were exposed to a linguistically simplified version of the input but offered no opportunity for such negotiation”. Students had more understanding of unmodified speech than when speakers try to modify what they say and make it easier for non-native speakers. Kumar then finishes the chapter talking about the impact of language teaching and the two types of management, which are talk and topic.

In the article How do I support a student’s first language when I don’t speak the language? is about a teacher named Dolores and how she teaches English. It starts off sharing that she has most of her students share other languages with the class. Usually sharing key phrases such as please and thank you, the students get to teach a part of their own language or their ancestor’s language. Dolores then talks about how her students tell jokes and then declare a winner for the funniest joke. Some students tell really funny jokes, but not all the students understand pragmatically what the joke means so it does not end up winning. Dolores talks about how she tries to help support the student’s first language even though she teaches in a multilingual classroom where not everyone’s first language is the same. Overall, the article gave a great overview of tips to use in the classroom and how to create a supportive environment for L2 learners.